Letter: Strong leadership lacking at the top

Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005 | 9:02 a.m.

Throughout the years that I spent in the Marine Corps, the fundamentals of leadership were always stressed. A leader must know the jobs of the people he is expected to lead better than anyone else. A leader must first be a follower. A leader must pick qualified people to serve below him. A leader must be continually improving himself.

We knew for days that powerful Hurricane Katrina was going to hit the Gulf Coast. Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or President Bush, needed only to turn on the news to see how bad the situation there was.

Instead of life-saving action, however, all that the Gulf Coast received was indifference and a lack of leadership. This lack of leadership could have been noticeable long before Hurricane Katrina was even a rain cloud in the Atlantic Ocean.

Before starting his work with FEMA, Mr. Brown had a laundry list of government and private service. However, as listed on both the FEMA Web site and the White House Web site, the only disaster type work that he was involved in was long ago, as an assistant city manager with oversight of emergency services. We all must ask ourselves: Does that type of work qualify you for top-level leadership in our federal emergency agencies?

We have the best infrastructure in the world to take care of our own citizens, but it was still boggled up. Why should anyone follow our lead on complex issues such as the war in Iraq? We have incompetent leadership at our top levels of government. This lack of effective leadership has destroyed every right we have to claim the title of world leader.

President Bush should admit his own gross leadership failures, dealing not only with his response to the disaster, but also in his choice of Michael Brown as FEMA director.

ELLIOT ANDERSON